Tell me who you are in Wimzi

Just a quick note: I've missed a lot of Wimzi IMs because I wasn't at the computer. Usually it's from someone I know, but I can't tell who are unless you say who you are, or change your nickname.

So, sorry if I don't get back to you! Let me know your name so I can write you back later :)

Flex framerate attribute

I always though that one could tell Flex apps from Flash, not only because Flex generally has standardized UI components, but also because Flex always looked a little jerky to me. When things resize, etc, it was never as smooth as Flash.

But I didn't realize that Flex has a default framerate of 24fps. You can change the framerate to whatever you want in the main Application tag:

<mx:Application frameRate="60" .../>

Simple change..... soo much better! As a bonus, the added fps doesn't seem to affect my CPU at all :). Perhaps it's a matter of finding a 'sweet spot' for your application. 60fps works pretty well for me right now...

Skype pwned by Patch Tuesday

This is one of those things that makes us realize the fragile world of software. Skype's servers went down during Patch Tuesday (when Microsoft releases major updates to Windows through Windows Update). The sheer number of computers simultaneously restarting and reconnecting to the Skype system was enough to bring the Skype servers to a resource-deprived crawl.

Of course, a bug in their code to deal with the issue didn't help either. Apparently their algorithm for "self-healing" network resources had a bug which caused, um, not much "healing". Arstechnica has more here.

Skype is what I use to call into AOL meetings and keep in touch with my family in Bangladesh. At $30/year (yes, YEAR), I get unlimited calls to phones in the US/Canada, plus the cheapest international calling rates EVAR. Something like 6 cents/minute to call Bangladesh. Unbelievable yet awesome :).

Skype works best with a USB headset (so much easier to plug in than having to reach behind your computer to plug in headphone/microsoft jacks). This is the one I use: Logitech USB 350 Headset. It doesn't hurt that the headset is also awesome for games like Battlefield 2, either.

Wimzi

Update: We released Wimzi for Facebook!

So, I mentioned briefly earlier that I'd joined the AIM team. One of the things that I'm working on is the Flash-version of Wimzi.

What is Wimzi? Wimzi is a way for people that have blogs, Facebook accounts (coming soon) and Myspace accounts to put up a little panel from which the visitors to their page can IM them. The best part is that the person's IM screenname is not exposed, and the visitors do not need to sign in (or have an AIM account) to talk! Go there and create one now.

I'm working on some newer, fresher UI concepts for the next version of Wimzi, so keep checking here as I might test some out on this site.

In the mean time, I have one set up for me on the right -------------->